


your city gave me asthma

by i_was_human



Series: blurring the fact and the fiction [1]
Category: Lost in Translation (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not K-Pop Idols, Angst, Dark, Depression, Falling Out of Love, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Introspection, Multi, No Dialogue, No beta we die like mne, Pills, Sad, Songfic, Suicidal Thoughts, lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:00:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26741773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_was_human/pseuds/i_was_human
Summary: that’s why i’m fucking leavingand your water gave me cancerand the pavement hurt my feelings-jubilee line, wilbursoot
Relationships: Ahn Jaewon | Wyld/Kang Dongho | D.Min/Kim Daehyun/Lee Minsoo
Series: blurring the fact and the fiction [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2167329
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	your city gave me asthma

**_wasting your time_ **  
**_wasting mine_ **

there's something to be said about a city perpetually locked in darkness.

dongho's fingers brush the countertops as he moves around the kitchen - silent, practiced. a deadly dance.

coffee. granola bar. check the air pollution - too high as always. bring out the pills. put them on the table.

it's always dark in this city.

it's gray in the day, black and gray at night. a dreary sort of dark gray when it rains. 

not for the first time, dongho regrets moving here.

oh, it's nice when the sun comes out - when the gray disappears for a fraction of a day and the air pollution becomes an afterthought. it can be beautiful, can be european, can be something glorious, something perfect, but the city attracts misfits, attracts the desperate, and dongho is so painfully desperate.

cast a glance at the boys asleep in the other room - three on a bed that fits two.

look at the pills again.

they're the only color in the darkened flat, illuminated by the weak light streaming through the window.

black and white and gray.

logically, they're orange.

dongho taps them into their containers, grabs his keys from the bowl. the clock blinks a neon green _3:42am_ as he tugs on his worn-out jacket, toeing on his shoes as he opens the door.

it's cold in this city - cold and always vaguely sulphuric. as if there's a drought instead of a flood of tears in the form of raindrops.

the sky cries for this city, too.

he pulls on his mask, flipping up his hood as he tugs the door shut and locks it.

this city is gray and burning and crying and ashes all at once.

**_i hate to see you leaving_ **  
**_a fate worse than dying_ **

there's a song on the radio.

tinny, weak - english. minsoo's sure if he tried out his native tongue, it'd be rusty, syllables tripping over chapped lips, but english, with its harsh sounds and inherent despair, is no better.

jaewon's at the table when he wakes up, hair tied back and eyes dull, and he raises his head as minsoo enters, dark eyes sparking with a dull sort of quasi-interest.

he doesn't speak.

doesn't have to.

minsoo's gaze lands on the specks of color - orange pills perfectly measured by an unshaking hand - and tries to remember when the last time he saw dongho was.

when he last turned on his phone, but.

that's not really dongho.

(then again, whatever dongho is now isn't really his dongho, either.)

jaewon stares at him for an instant, spoon resting in his cracked bowl, and minsoo's gaze slides past him and to the endless expanse of gray outside, visible through their filthy windows.

gray sky. gray raindrops.

it's raining already.

minsoo mutters a curse under his breath, korean tripping over his tongue as he stuffs a granola bar in his pocket.

the song is still playing.

he raises his hand in silent farewell, tugging on someone's raincoat - daehyun's, most likely, given the faded yellow - and pulls it over his head, tugging on his mask and toeing on his shoes.

never let it be said he likes the rain.

never let it be said he likes this city.

**_your city gave me asthma_ **  
**_that’s why i’m fucking leaving_ **

daehyun's fingers trip over the frets.

jaewon stares at him - at the sky-gray circles under his eyes, at the pallor of his skin, at the black-blond of his hair and the glasses perched on his crooked nose - and opts to hold his tongue.

daehyun turns his attention back to the strings, tightening them as if that's the issue, and he strums it once more, seemingly satisfied with whatever he changed.

his voice soars for an instant - soars in a way it did back when there _were_ blue skies and clean(er) air and decent places to live that weren't so inherently tainted - but it cracks at the apex, and just like his voice, daehyun's mood falls down, down, down.

the strings snap as he pulls on them, fibers digging into his fingerpads, and jaewon watches, dimly amused, as daehyun slowly breaks down the instrument that once brought him such joy.

he keeps silent.

the city has a way of doing that.

it doesn't blanket _sound_ , but it blankets voices - blankets reassurances, laughter, smiles, sunshine - and leaves nothing else.

a police siren goes off in the distance.

daehyun snaps another string.

jaewon's gaze drifts to the pills on the table - orange on cracked brown-gray - and for a moment, he wonders what it must be like.

(he doesn't have to try very hard.)

the first drop of blood falls as the fourth string snaps.

daehyun's fingers, slick with blood, tug at the fifth string, guitar pick (and wasn't that a present? from jaewon, long ago?) lying, discarded, on the carpet.

jaewon hates this city.

hates what it does to people.

the fifth string snaps under daehyun's fingers, and he tosses the husk of the guitar to the side, wrapping his arms around his legs and pulling them to his chest.

slowly, slowly, jaewon pulls the husk towards him and starts to restring it.

it's such an expensive act of self-mutilation.

**_and your water gave me cancer_ **  
**_and the pavement hurt my feelings_ **

when daehyun swallows, he tastes copper.

there's a sort of oppressive cloyingness to the air after it rains - a fresh smell that's a distant memory, as tainted by exhaust and smoke and desperation as it is - and it makes his hoodie stick to his arms as he walks, the guitar case heavy on his back.

he didn't clean the blood off his guitar pick.

his thumb finds it in his pocket - sharp, worn-out, on the verge of breaking - and runs over it, tracing the bumps and ridges of dried blood. 

funny.

the sky is gray, he notes - a gray blanket for a gray city that houses nothing but gray people.

were dongho not the poet, he'd joke that it should've been his calling.

but daehyun is a street musician with a broken voice and a broken guitar and dreams slipped from his rain-slick fingers, and he is not a poet.

the same song is playing on the radio when he finds his place to set up - something banal by some guy with a guitar - and he takes a seat, tucking his feet under his legs.

his glasses are dirty, he notes, and makes no move to clean them.

the sky is a limp sort of light gray when he starts strumming, and a deep sort of dark gray when he stops, the sky blanketed with a haze of fog and exhaust and smoke and other assorted things that tear everyone down little by little. still - he sings on about blue skies, about grassy green meadows, sings about better days until his throat aches and the colors fade from his mind, replaced with the deep orange of his pills.

orange, gray - it's all the same.

this city blankets noise, blankets song, blankets hopes and love and dreams, and every single time daehyun comes here - here to this pointless city corner in a city with no time for pointlessness - he remembers it.

he makes enough to buy himself dinner, at least.

**_shout at the wall_ **  
**_cause the walls don’t fucking love you_ **

when dongho returns, jaewon's the only one awake.

his eyes glow in the shards of light the streetlamps provide - luminous, almost cat-like - and dongho toes off his shoes, stuffing his mask in his pocket.

there are no words exchanged.

the clattering of dongho's keys in the bowl startled jaewon out of his quasi-reverie, and he blinks a few times, gaze flitting over their darkened flat. 

dongho doesn't really know what he's looking at. there's nothing much to see.

jaewon traces the edge of the countertop with a finger, gaze dropping to the cracked ceramic, and dongho pulls off his tattered jacket, hanging it up on the hook.

he doesn't get paid enough, but. well.

when you chase a rainbow and find nothing but gray skies and grayer hopelessness, nothing will ever be enough.

jaewon stares at him, dark hair hanging in his eyes and too-skinny form backlit by the gray light of the streetlamp, and dongho nudges his shoes closer to the wall, unsure of what to do.

he sleeps here, but he doesn't live here.

no - there is him and there is them, one and two and one instead of four. there is him and then there is minsoo and then there is jaewonanddaehyun, jaewon so wrapped up in keeping daehyun safe and happy and alive that the others fall to the wayside.

dongho's let himself fall to his wayside, so he shares the sentiment.

jaewon stands, stuffs his hands in the pockets of his worn-out hoodie. he says nothing - doesn't have to - and so dongho pulls off his shirt, placing it in the laundry bag before following him to the bedroom.

dongho hates this room.

cracked walls, bloodstained carpet, pills strewn across the dresser - it's an active testament to his failures.

but jaewon's staring at him with those too-bright catlike eyes, and so dongho climbs into bed, resting his chin on minsoo's head and draping the younger man's arm over his side.

it's ultimately meaningless, but jaewon seems appeased, if nothing else.

**_shout at the wall_ **  
**_cause the walls don’t fucking love you_ **

the more minsoo thinks about it, the more he comes to a conclusion.

his conclusion is this: they were in love, once.

they were in love, back before dongho was a cryptid and daehyun was a ghost and jaewon his orpheus. they were in love, back when the world was bright and colorful and the sun shone in more colors than gray.

they were in love, once.

the bed smells faintly of dongho when he wakes up - cigarette smoke and exhaust and oil - and for a long moment, he lies there, staring at their cracked and stained ceiling.

they were in love, once. he knows that for sure.

he does not think they are in love now.

that's not his end alone. minsoo, like jaewon, chases after memories - tries to equate black-and-white photographs with full-color films.

this city takes love and _saps it_.

he stares at the ceiling for a few hours - stares at the stained and cracked gray - before daehyun wakes up, and oh, he's late, but it doesn't matter much, anyways.

daehyun lies there with him for a bit, lies there and stares at their cracked ceiling in a sickening mockery of the day of their last picnic - the day they stared at the clouds and talked about how they were going to reach their dreams in the _big city_ \- but in the end, this is what their dreams amounted to, isn't it?

a cracked and stained ceiling.

daehyun's hands are covered in scabs, minsoo notices - covered in dried blood that's gone tacky, unable to be washed off.

daehyun doesn't love him anymore.

this too is a scab over the gaping wound that is _them_.

**_there’s a reason london puts barriers on the tube lines_ **  
**_there’s a reason london puts barriers on the rails_ **

jaewon would be lying if he said he wasn't afraid of the trains.

not afraid in the strict sense - he knows the trains aren't going to directly hurt him. he knows he won't get run over, won't get squished to bits by the wheels and torn to shreds by whistling metal.

that doesn't mean daehyun won't.

that's the caveat - _directly_. they won't directly hurt him, but they can directly hurt daehyun, and that indirectly hurts him.

he should've been a philosopher instead of a minimum-wage barista.

daehyun grips onto the ceiling handle, glasses askew and dark eyes dull, and jaewon stares at him - at his washed-out hoodie, at his washed-out hair, at the washed-out husk of passion in his eyes - and he thinks.

he doesn't like thinking in this city. 

daehyun's hoodie is the same orange as the pills he swallows, the same orange of the bright sunrises jaewon only vaguely remembers.

back when they were in love. 

and isn't that a jarring thought?

they're still in love - passively, if not actively, jaewon thinks - but what he loves is an ideal, a character, someone who _was_ instead of _is_.

daehyun is colored in colors that were despite being someone who is, is colored in things too bright for this gray, gray city, and so jaewon thinks.

he thinks until the announcer states that it's the last stop, and he drags daehyun out into some part of the city he doesn't know (not that it matters - it's all the same gray) and walks down the endless mazes of streets, a sort of rain-chilled numbness settling over him

daehyun is not who he was.

jaewon is not who he was.

their love did not change with that.

**_there’s a reason london puts barriers on the tube lines_ **  
**_there’s a reason london puts barriers on the rails_ **

occasionally, daehyun thinks about it.

what it would be like to be crushed beneath the wheels. what it would be like to die.

it would probably be much the same as living, he thinks. endless white-gray-black-

perhaps more interesting, even.

mostly because his voice cracks when he sings, now.

he tries not to let that bother him.

jaewon stands next to him, swaying slightly as the train moves, and daehyun stares at him for an instant, committing the lines of his face to memory. here are his sunken cheeks, here are his dark-rimmed eyes, here is the scar on his cheek.

here is the dried blood under his fingernails. 

daehyun's nails dig into his palms as he stares straight ahead, lights flickering by and casting the car in a sort of blackgraywhitegrayblack. jaewon stands next to him - dark hair hanging limp around his face - and for an instant, daehyun wonders if he's a mirror.

he should be a comedian instead of a musician.

after all, his singing already makes him want to laugh - that bubbling sort of laughter that comes from sheer hysteria as your world collapses around you. 

he's grown well acquainted with that laugh, lately.

it's a gray sort of laugh, a blackgraywhitegrayblack sort of laugh that rises and falls in time with the clicking of the train on the rail.

daehyun doesn't particularly like it.

**_there’s a reason london puts barriers on the tube lines_**

after jaewon steps out, daehyun follows him.

daehyun follows him and stops for a second, stares at the tracks.

jaewon reaches out, grabs his wrist.

asks him to step back.

daehyun isn't listening.

he stares at the gray, stares at the repeating pattern filled with trash and junk and the remnants of dried blood that don't quite go away.

jaewon tugs a bit this time, asks him to come back with him.

daehyun doesn't reply.

**_there’s a reason they fail_ **

if daehyun wanted to do it, he would.

jaewon knows that for sure.

and yet-

daehyun leaves anyways.

he leaves and comes back to their shitty flat with the cracked roof and the stained walls and the decaying corpse of a relationship hanging between them, and jaewon doesn't know why.

he's not sure if daehyun loves him.

he's not sure what difference it makes.

all he knows is that this black-and-white city will take until there's nothing left to take.

**Author's Note:**

> the city is going to go unnamed because i don't want to shit on any real european cities, but it was loosely based on my one [1] trip to london.
> 
> ok so fun fact - i am best at dialogue, so i wanted to challenge myself by writing something without it
> 
> [twit](https://twitter.com/i_was_human_) | [lit fic discord!](https://discord.gg/CNunB74)


End file.
